This week’s news from Pen & Sword

The Second World War upended many lives, disrupting patterns and routines and bringing an array of terrifying new dangers with it. Like many women left behind on the home front during the war, Jenny Nater found herself in an unforeseen scenario in which her talents could be put to an unexpected use.

Jenny served as a bilingual wireless operator in the top-secret Special Duties Service (Y) at Dover, intercepting traffic from German surface craft in the English Channel and reporting it back to Bletchley Park (X). In this post she carried out important work for the war effort and also struck up a series of life-changing relationships, most notably with a Coastal Force Command Lieutenant, who was subsequently lost off the coast of Dover in tragic circumstances. The story of how their careers interrelated, both on land and at sea, makes for thrilling and poignant reading. These memoirs not only add an important layer to our understanding of Allied intelligence practices conducted during this conflict, they also tell the story of one woman’s very private war and the opportunities, sacrifices and victories it encompassed.

Unlike chess or backgammon, tabletop wargames have no single, accepted set of rules. Most wargamers at some point have had a go at writing their own rules and virtually all have modified commercially available sets to better suit their idea of the ideal game or to adapt favourite rules to a different historical period or setting. But many who try soon find that writing a coherent set of rules is harder than they thought, while tweaking one part of an existing set can often have unforeseen consequences for the game as a whole. Now, at last, help is at hand.

Veteran gamer and rules writer John Lambshead has teamed up with the legendary Rick Priestley, creator of Games Workshop’s phenomenally successful Warhammer system, to create this essential guide for any would-be wargame designer or tinkerer. Rick and John give excellent advice on deciding what you want from a wargame and balancing ‘realism’ with playability. They discuss the relative merits of various mechanisms (cards, dice, tables) then discuss how to select and combine these to handle the various essential game elements of turn sequences, combat resolution, morale etc to create a rewarding and playable game that suits your tastes and requirements.

About the book: Emma Hamilton, much maligned by her contemporaries and later by historians and commentators, rose from the most humble beginnings to play a startling role in Britain’s naval victory over France and Spain in 1805. In this new book Barry Gough, employing the letters between the protagonists, and the unpublished examination of her career by famed American historian of the Royal Navy Arthur Marder, strongly defends Emma. He shows how this most talented of women and the beauty of her age fell victim to innuendo, slander and cruel caricature. She was to die in poverty in Calais in 1815, just months before Napoleon’s final defeat.

Pen & Sword Books are thrilled to announce that we will once again be attending Who Do You Think You Are?Live at Birmingham NEC, 6-8 April 2017!

Tickets for the show have just been released with a fantastic Early Bird offer – 2 tickets for only £22 (which is almost a 40% saving!). This offer is valid until midnight on 22 November so book your tickets now and come and say hello to us at the show! Book tickets online here or call 0844 8737330.